Top Five Start-Up Posts of the Year

TriplePundit has had a heck of a year. With your help, we’ve grown to be one of the most widely-read online publications about sustainable business, we’ve brought in many new contributors, and we’ve helped stoke the fires of a new, green economy in many new places. We hope you’ve had a great time reading and engaging with us and we’re ready to kick of January with a lot of new features, partnerships, and content.

To celebrate the end of the year, or crack team of editors has put together a few top-five lists for the year, including this one: the best start-up stories of the year. These are the stories that inspired us the most and gave us hope about the possibility for a better way to do business.

First up: the unbelievable. Making drinking water from thin air. It’s not science fiction. This story hit big for the technology’s potential to bring water to waterless regions.

Then there was Virgance, the company that figured out how to turn activism into a business model. Got a mob, need action? These guys will tell you how to monetize it, too.

Zumbox plans to revolutionize the mail with the power of digital transmission. How novel!

Molten Salt just sounds cool, doesn’t it? Molten Salt! SolarReserve thinks it’s the key to solving the solar energy storage problem. And adding flavor to your popcorn. (Ok, that last one maybe not so much.)

Finally, there’s Better Place. The company aims to make the world just that, through innovations to electric vehicle charging and the car ownership model. Turn a traditional sales model on its head by renting the risky part (batteries) and suddenly you have a new market opportunity. These guys are one to watch, for sure.

Check back tomorrow for the best of the worst: greenwashing edition. On Wednesday we’ll look at our top five posts of the year!

Jen is editor in chief of TriplePundit. She has an MBA in Sustainable Management from the Presidio Graduate School and lives in Oakland with her husband and normally happy baby. Hit her up at on twitter @jenboynton to discuss diapering strategies or sustainability reporting methodology.